Accredited COVID-19 labs in PH now at 11, includes Medical City

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said during a televised briefing that The Medical City in Ortigas was just recently accredited.The other 10 laboratories already operating based on DOH data as of Monday are:Of the 11, 9 are government-run and two are private - St. Luke's and Medical City, which are among the private hospitals with the largest number of COVID-19 patients, based on DOH data.

Since January, the RITM in Muntinlupa has been running most of the country’s COVID-19 tests. It was only in March that 5 other subnational laboratories were accredited by the DOH.The process takes 5 stages, including self assessment, validation or on-site assessment by experts, personnel training, proficiency testing or validation by RITM, and full-scale implementation.

The Philippines has been struggling to increase its COVID-19 testing as it did not have enough test kits and laboratories at the onset of the outbreak.It was only recently that the RITM was able to speed up its processing time of 5 to 7 days, due to backlogs, to 48 to 72 hours.

With more test kits and laboratories, the country has seen a continued rise in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, reaching 3,764 by Tuesday.Duque said other strategies taken to increase the capacity of testing in the country are having an efficient workflow inside the laboratory, increasing the number of personnel, and allocating additional equipment if needed.

“We look at the strategic locations when certifying laboratories,” he said in Filipino.Of the 11, two are in Visayas (Cebu City and Iloilo City) and one is in Mindanao. The rest are in Metro Manila and Luzon.“Pagtutuunan ng pansin ang ibang pamamaraan ng pag-test. Kabilang dito ang GeneXpert, isang uri ng test na matagal nang ginagamit sa bansa [para sa] tuberculosis,” Duque said.

(We are also looking into other methods of testing, including GeneXpert, which is a kind of test that has long been used for tuberculosis testing.)The GeneXpert platform is being studied in other countries as a potential tool for rapid molecular testing.

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